It is a strange reality but opera as an artform is always given special and arguably preferential treatment by governments and other influential forces in Western society. This happens, it seems, regardless…

Nearly three-quarters of Australians go to live art events, such as Dark Mofo in Hobart.
Stefan Karpiniec/FlickrJune 27, 2017

New survey from the Australia Council shows pretty much all Australians engage with the arts, and 8-in-10 do so online. However more people are ambivalent about public arts funding, and more people think the arts are too expensive.

Ken Thaiday Snr, an internationally-acclaimed artist from Erub Island in the Torres Strait, has been awarded a 2017 Red Ochre Award. Thaiday's work draws on dance, the people and land of the islands to produce elaborate masks and headdresses.

Visitors take in Cameron Robbins’ Field Lines at Dark Mofo at the Museum of Old and New Art.
Mona/Remi ChauvinDecember 25, 2016

Many great artists died in 2016: Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Paul Cox, Shirley Hazzard. It was a year of creative foment and as always, intense debate about the importance of the arts to a thriving, democratic society.

Sydney Opera House during this year’s Vivid Festival: now, more than ever, we need artists to tell us the truth.
Tibor Kovacs/FlickrNovember 17, 2016

The organisation Senator George Brandis described as having an “iron wall” around it, is refreshing its sentinels. This week’s announcement of four new appointments to the Australia Council Board represents…

Why can’t an artist offer advice to politicians in the same way a scientist can?
David Gray/ReutersSeptember 9, 2016

In one of those abyssal silences that punctuate official Thinkfests when artists have to come up with new policy ideas that don’t involve asking governments for more money, I once facetiously suggested…

In 1983, a groundbreaking inquiry into the economic circumstances of artists released a report containing a string of recommendations. Thirty three years on, the inquiry's chair asks, what has changed?

The Mexican artist Diego Rivera was an early contributor to the Pago en Especie program, which allows artists to pay tax with art.
Detail of the Rivera mural El hombre en cruce de caminos (1934). Wikimedia CommonsJuly 25, 2016

Many Australian artists eke out a living, yet government funding is generally heading backwards. Can we learn from Mexico, where artists are allowed to pay tax in paintings or sculptures in lieu of cash?

In the words of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, “the injustice of it is almost perfect”. Last week, Jason Potts argued here that the cuts made to around 60 cultural organisations under the Australia…

Did Adam Bandt have the numbers right on arts funding?
AAP Image/Mick TsikasMay 19, 2016